Adventus

"The central doctrine of Christianity, then, is not that God is a bastard. It is, in the words of the late Dominican theologian Herbert McCabe, that if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you."--Terry Eagleton

"It is impossible for me to say in my book one word about all that music has meant in my life. How then can I hope to be understood?--Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice."--Bryan Stevenson

The thing is: if it doesn't happen in front of the camera, it doesn't happen. "Pics or it didn't happen," as the internet demands. So without the press to report on it, of what importance is the trip? I'm not being cynical, I'm being serious. The only reason we know Donald Trump's name is because of the press. If he wants to go off the reservation and leave the press at the border, so be it. I don't think it's a "disturbing precedent." I think it's a fine example of what a fool Donald Trump is. I don't care if it's unprecedented, just as I don't get why reporters would be mad about it. Don't get mad, get even. You control the access to the airwaves; use that control. Trump shuts you out: you shut him out.

Actually, he has already shut himself out. Maybe he'll to go Mexico and score a truly diplomatic win for his campaign.

Too bad there's nobody there to report on it.....(since we know the foreign press, even when its our Cousins across the Pond, is never to be trusted).

Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Bowling Alone alone

I've mentioned Clifford Simak before (but none of those references are related to this post, so I won't link them), and his prescience about technology and its affect on human society. His major work is "City," really a collection of related stories, the central one (it won a place in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame) being "Huddling Place."

Simak imagines a future imaginable then (not now; though; and our present is unimaginable as his future; something interesting there, but we can't stop now), when technology has allowed humans to scatter into personal strongholds, away from cities because the need for them is no more (whereas, in modern times, we seem to be more dependent on cities as the base technology of sewage and sanitation and transportation make city dwelling more important than ever; well, that and industrialization, as more and more us of continue to move away from agriculture and land-based sources of income; again, the future is never what we imagine). This is possible partly because of air travel (helicopters as flying cars) and through communication technology (that has more to do with Star Trek holodecks than Skype).

The result is, in "Huddling Place," a man who has developed such an attachment to the family estate, and such a fear of leaving it, that when he is called to perform life-saving surgery on a friend and philosopher (whose philosophy will change the shape of human existence, if he can live to write it down), he fails. He can't leave, he can't even bear the thought of human society, and his friend dies (the drama of the story is a bit more poignant than that, but that's a fair plot summary).

In the survey, nearly 31 percent of millennials said that the reason they use the drive-thru isn’t speed or convenience, but because doing so requires the least amount of actual human interaction. Such a tendency will, no doubt, encourage companies to further automate the fast-food purchasing process. In many airports, for example, orders are already placed in kiosks, paid by credit card in the kiosk, and picked up at the counter.

For the moment, the food is delivered by a human being — but it’s not difficult to imagine a time in which the same job couldn’t be performed by a none-too-high-tech robot of some sort. If nothing else, surveys such as this one will encourage companies to find ways to phase out employees.

...

“I’ve been inside restaurants where we’ve installed ordering kiosks … and I’ve actually seen young people waiting in line to use the kiosk where there’s a person standing behind the counter, waiting on nobody.”

Pudzer added that his goal is open fully automated restaurants that require no human employees.

We should pause here to point out that what happened to most U.S. manufacturing jobs was automation, not foreign competition. Auto assembly lines use robots now, not laborers at every station performing repetitive tasks for hours. It's probably inevitable fast food will be fully automated one day. But it's interesting the millennials are hastening that.

I can only say my daughter, nearing the quarter century mark, would rather order on-line than go to a store (except for groceries), and I suspect she'd be more comfortable ordering from a kiosk than dealing with a human being. And of course there are the tables of younger people in restaurants all studiously studying the screens in their palms, rather than talking to each other (the way they still do in TeeVee commercials).

This is a trend that makes "bowling alone" look like a communal activity.

I understand there was a day when even the appearance of impropriety or conflict of interest was the gold standard for politicians. But, in truth, that merely meant the politicians made sure they kept their business dealings very private. LBJ made himself a rich man when he was out of office by buying a local broadcast company (KLBJ still operates a radio station and a TV station in Austin. In the days when nobody watched TV except on broadcast, and only on VHF, LBJ made sure any other TV station in Austin had to broadcast on UHF.). And he steered a lot of government contracts (which benefited people along the lower Colorado River, to be sure, as well as the entire City of Austin) to the company which became Brown & Root (and they returned the favor). Rick Perry has never worked for anything but the Texas government (or the National Guard) his entire adult life, yet he doesn't have to work now that he's unemployed. Oddly, no one ever called these benefits of public life the appearance of a conflict of interest (we got close when Perry issued a mandate that all school age female students in Texas take the vaccine Gardasil before enrolling in public schools. Merck was a major campaign contributor to Perry, and the Lege overrode is order as soon as possible; mostly because of the connection between teenage sex and the human pamplona virus, however, not because of Perry's ties to Merck.).

So it's a fluid standard that isn't yet being applied to Trump, possibly because the NYT (and others) don't imagine Trump has a snowball's chance in hell of winning the White House. Trump, however, has said he'll let his kids run his business, but he won't put it in a blind trust. He says he won't care about his business anymore, and since he's always consistent in his public statements we can trust him, right?

I don't know why no one takes him seriously, but is having a serious fit of the vapors over what Hillary Clinton's connection to a charitable foundation might mean. Except this concept of "appearance" pretty much died with Bill Clinton's impeachment, an impeachment he was was responsible for as the pedestrian is responsible for being in the crosswalk when the driver of the car refuses to slow down.

Republicans took the concept of "appearance" and responsibility for same to its logical conclusion in that impeachment; and to this day it is only applied to Democratic presidents. There was an "appearance" of conflict when the Bush Administration contracted with Halliburton to fight in Iraq but somehow it wasn't taken all that seriously. Maybe it's because the GOP always raises the issue, but the appearance in this case seems to be more troubling to the NYT and others, than any appearance of conflict by a GOP President (up to and including George H.W.'s ass saving pardon of everyone involved in Iran-Contra, before they could reveal how "out of the loop" the elder Bush wasn't). And frankly, after that, the American public pretty much took "appearance" of either conflict of interest or impropriety to be as out-dated a notion as hotel dicks making sure Mr. and Mrs. Jones were married to each other.

You can be sure, however, that the newspaper that gave us Whitewater and the subsequent non-scandals of the first Clinton administration would keep the "appearance of conflict" story in the news through the second Clinton administration. The NYT is already trying to tie Anthony Weiner's bizarre predilections to Bill Clinton's term in the White House. You can't make this stuff up.

True, but that's been known since at least 2003, when Hillary published it in her autobiography. It wasn't on FoxNews or Breitbart or Trump's Twtter feed, though, so apparently that's why it's news to him.

Sunday, August 28, 2016

The more things change, dept.

The Funny Thing Is

I'm old enough to remember when the internet was going to make us all members of a global village. I even remember my astonishment at reading an article in an Irish newspaper about a woman who lived her life on the "Catholic" side of Belfast, and when that line finally stopped being a Maginot Line she crossed at her peril, she was astonished to find out Protestants lived much as she did. From her childhood experiences and what adults had told her, she practically expected them to be aliens from another planet. She had so ingrained this idea she was shocked to learn they were just like her, but even the slight differences in how they lived made them strange, and she had to examine her expectations to relinquish them.

It was, to me, a stunning insight, and one I got to share in "real time," thanks to the internet. Thanks to the writer's intelligent and sensitive insights, I saw Irish history through her eyes, and understood for once what had been going on in a part of the world I realized I only knew through my American perspective.

No more, though.

This article on "Big Data" and what it calls "Dataism" makes several cultural errors, starting with the idea that religion explained it all to us until Rousseau came along. I'm not going to argue against the broad brush assumptions (it's a magazine article, not a scholarly treatise), I only want to point out the people in Asia and Africa and the Pacific Islands (i.e., non-Europeans or their cultural descendants) would look at that summation of human history and say: "Huh?"

It's the sort of inverse of the old joke about the Lone Ranger and Tonto, the one that ends with "What you mean 'we,' white man?"

Not to mention, as one commenter does (and it is worth quoting):

But there are around 1 billion people in the world who don't have access to electricity.

There are another several billion who don't have access to computers.

Doubtless this will change over time--but partly because these people are increasingly moving to rich countries to get at least a few crumbs from the tables of the rich world.

The French created the philosophy of structuralism to try to undo some of the cultural chauvinism of their own efforts at anthropology (where cultures were inevitably "graded" on a Western scale of values, and usually weighed and found wanting). Deconstructionism came along to challenge some of the assumptions still inherent in structuralism that still skewed the view toward the preferences of those doing the evaluating (i.e., the ones with the power). Niebuhr caught on to this problem of power as well, analyzing it from what seemed old fashioned notions of evil and human fallibility, i.e., "original sin."

Even in the era of "Big Data" and the "global village," it seems clear we're going to continue to make the same fundamental errors again and again.

Friday, August 26, 2016

War On, Christmas!

"He opens up the paper each morning and sees our nation’s leaders giving a hundred billion dollars to Iran, or he opens the paper and some new school district has just eliminated the ability for its students to say the pledge of allegiance, or some fire department in some town is ordered by the mayor to no longer fly the American flag on the back of a fire truck," Eric Trump told The Stream's James Robinson. "Or, he sees the tree on the White House lawn has been renamed 'Holiday tree' instead of 'Christmas tree.' I could go on and on for hours. Those are the very things that made my father run, and those are the very things he cares about."

Because one of the important Constitutional duties of President is the naming of the national Christmas Tree. Thomas Jefferson had his slaves cut one down, if I remember correctly. George Washington cut the first National Christmas Tree down with his little silver axe.

Foghorn Leghorn Cues Up the Weekend

In that speech, I was talking about the impact violent crime and vicious drug cartels were having on communities across the country and the particular danger they posed to children and families. Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today.

My life’s work has been about lifting up children and young people who’ve been let down by the system or by society. Kids who never got the chance they deserved. And unfortunately today, there are way too many of those kids, especially in African-American communities. We haven’t done right by them. We need to. We need to end the school to prison pipeline and replace it with a cradle-to-college pipeline.

As an advocate, as First Lady, as Senator, I was a champion for children. And my campaign for president is about breaking down the barriers that stand in the way of all kids, so every one of them can live up to their God-given potential.

Got to dance with the one what brung ya

Don't know why "Clintons" is possessive; or even what that means. But he also accuses her of "sabotage of the inner cities," which, as we all know, is a blacks-only zone in every major city in America. Well, that's only common sense....

"Nobody even knows what it is, and she didn't know what it was. This is a term that was just given," Trump said when CNN's Anderson Cooper asked if he embraces the alt-right. "There is no alt-right or alt-left. All that I'm embracing is common sense."

The alt-right, however, begs to differ. That HuffPo article has several quotes from alt-right "leaders" claiming Clinton's speech means they are now mainstream, or at least recognized by the mainstream.

Can Sex Be Evil?

To lay my cards on the table, I grew up as the "sexual revolution" was apparently revolutionizing our ideas about sex, but I grew up in a culture (maybe an outlier) where sex before marriage was still taboo, or the surest way to get married real early (well, if pregnancy was involved). Not that there weren't girls who "went away" in high school, and not that high school students weren't having sex. But it was taboo among "nice families," in a way it simply isn't anymore.

And most of that taboo was centered on sex as the gateway evil, not unlike marijuana was a "gateway drug" (yeah, it was weird). Nowadays, of course, sex is natural; it is good; it is human. We are almost back to the culture that produced "Gilgamesh," where Enkidu, made by the gods to be a companion to Gilgamesh, but not yet human, sleeps with the temple priestess (we would unkindly call her a "temple prostitute") for days on end, until he becomes human through the encounter. That is actually, I think, a healthy view of sex, though it puts it back onto the "rite of passage" that sexual intercourse was for young men (never young women!) when I was growing up.

Yeah, it was really weird.

TC has some very good thoughts on the pernicious effects of pornography. This is becoming a problem not just for the abuses it leads to (even promotes, in TC's argument), but because it is such an unrealistic picture of human sexuality, and yet it is how children, more and more, are learning about human sexuality. We don't teach it as they would have in "Monty Python's The Meaning of Life", and our children end up, reports say, learning about it from the internet (apparently there's a lot of porn on the internet. I thought it was all just politics and cat videos.). And that raises two questions that need answers: Is sex evil?, and what is sex?

If sex is just male/female intercourse, then sex is porn and rape and the wedding night. So of course it isn't that simple, because rape is not sex (not even about sex; it's about power. Let's be clear on that up front.) But then there's the question "What is rape?" Broadly defined, rape is nonconsensual sexual intercourse (let's leave it there and leave out non-bodily parts ('foreign objects') and using something other than the reproductive organs alone). We can argue the nature of consent, but that's not the issue here. The issue is: what is sex, or maybe even: when is sex?

If two college students, male and female, engage in sexual intercourse, this is now good and natural, rather than shameful and to be hidden (well, sex in public is not good, but you get the idea). But sometimes it isn't; when it is called rape, suddenly it is evil. But is it still sex? No, is the consensus; because rape is sexual intercourse without consent. Okay, so what happened to consent in the sex that is now rape (and so both evil and not sex)?

We do two things there, neither of them wrong per se: we remove rape from the category of sex, and then we declare the sexual intercourse that is ordinarily "just sex," to be evil. Now, sex used to be justified on the "will you still love me tomorrow" basis: if it's part of a loving relationship, etc., etc. That was the way we decided sex outside marriage (well, before marriage is what we meant) was okay. "Casual sex" was still "bad," but that barrier fell, too, and sex wasn't evil even if it was just for fun. Women could consent without being "bad girls," ("fallen women" is the adult version, I guess; but that was archaic before I was born), but then the weight fell on the idea of consent. Anytime consent was withdrawn, suddenly the sex was no longer good; now it was evil (because rape is an evil so profound the rapist should wear the scarlet letter forever) and, being evil, was rape; and being rape, was not sex.

That was the formula. That is the formula.

It's the "No True Scotsman" fallacy: sex cannot be evil, so whenever sexual intercourse is evil (child pornography, rape), it is not sex.

But can sex be evil?

Actually, anything human can; but drawing the line between "good" and "evil" is not easily done. Child pornography is undeniably evil; pedophilia is evil. Sex with minors is evil as a matter of law (they cannot legally give consent, even if they do). Some still want to say Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky was evil (because he was her boss; or because she was so much younger than him). We slide these boundaries around to suit our preferences. And when we do it, we exclude what we declare "evil" from what we declare to be "sex." Or we re-categorize sex: it would take a peculiar definition to categorize pornography as sex, but we excuse it by saying the participants are consenting adults (the claim that Clinton sexually harassed Lewinsky steps lightly over the question of consent between adults) and if you don't like it, don't watch it.

That's not a line we take with child pornography; again, because of the consent issue.

So consent transmutes sex into good; lack of consent makes sexual intercourse evil, and so no longer "sex." We can't allow sex to be evil, for fear of returning to what we call the "Puritan" past (the Puritans, like the Victorians, were actually far more sensible about this than we are; though I don't want to return to their mores, either). We draw this simple line, and we apply it absolutely, so that pornography without consent (children) is bad, but with consent, it's accepted. Does it warp and distort ideas about human sexuality, even encourage horrific acts? Apparently that's the cost of doing business; or of having freedom. Besides, the minute it becomes horrible, it isn't sex; so one is evil, and the other incorruptible.

The problem with that freedom is not limited to extreme examples of criminality, because now it has given rise to the concept of "rape culture." Sex without consent is rape, and rape is bad. But what is the timeline on consent? If two college age kids consent to sex (even if both are drunk; and isn't drinking something adults do, and take responsibility for?), and one regrets it in the morning, was it still sex last night? Kinda depends on who regrets it, doesn't it? If the guy thinks it was a mistake, no one calls the girl a rapist, do they? But if the regret is on the other party, the male part of that activity should be banned from college, shunned by society, driven out into the void reserved for those who can never get a college degree or any public recognition because they wear the "R" forever.

It's no accident that, as sex became freer, "rape culture" became a concept. If we tell women to "just say no," that would be bad. But if their agency is equal to the male's, then rape becomes almost entirely the stranger in the bushes or the roofie in the drink. So the female's agency is superior to the male's; she can decide whether she wanted it, or not, and she can decide whenever she wants. My mid-20's daughter tells me she tells her boyfriend's younger brother, now in his second year of college, "Don't stick your dick in stupid," meaning to warn him away from being called a rapist. But maybe the only solution is: "Don't stick your dick in, period." Except that would make sex bad, again. Now what?

Rape is evil. Sex, on the other hand, is good; and college kids should engage in it. But they shouldn't rape: and we'll decide whether you did, or not. We'll decide in kangaroo courts run by colleges who have no requirements of due process, rule of law, rules of evidence; or we'll decide in social media, whether or not you were tried in a criminal court. We will declare rape evil, and sex good, because rape can never be sex (nor should it be), and evil must be forever punished.

Cui bono?

There is something of a cause celebre over the case of Nate Parker and an alleged rape in 1999. I write "alleged" because Parker was acquitted of the crime in a jury trial, but the issue has resurfaced with enough vehemence to cause the American Film Institute to cancel a screening of Parker's new film "Birth of a Nation." (Salon now has a banner headline announcing it will discuss the 17 year old trial today. A true discussion among solons and serious legal experts, I'm sure.)

I don't care about the film, or Mr. Parker. What interests me is the ancient question of power: Cui bono?

This contretemps hinges on the idea of rape victims being "survivors." It's a curious use of the word, since "survivor" usually refers to someone who has evaded death. The young boy in the ambulance in Syria is a survivor. Someone whose cancer treatment defeats the cancer is a survivor. Victims of crime are now survivors. Well, victims of certain crimes.

It's a curious locution, and it raises the question: Cui bono? Here is a statement on the status of Nate Parker by Wagatwe Sara Wanjuki, co-founder of Survivors Eradicating Rape Culture:

“Nate Parker’s case is a really great example of what happens when colleges fail to hold assailants accountable. Assailants go out into the world with the implicit condonation of their actions because they get away with it while survivors continue to suffer,” said Wanjuki in a Facebook private message. “Penn State’s role in this must not be ignored — they had signs that they did not properly handle sexual abuse before the [Jerry] Sandusky coverup came to light. This is what happens when institutions don’t care about doing the right thing; they assist in creating a world where rapists and sex abusers thrive.”

I don't have a problem with the concept of "rape culture," although it's an ambiguous term and one meant to assert power in new ways. It's the assertion of power, in fact, that concerns me. Lord Acton was right, but too ambiguous: Power does corrupt, and absolute power does corrupt absolutely. So in a fight for power, we always have to ask the base question: Cui bono?

Now, there are two things going on in that assertion by Ms. Wanjuki: one is that the college had to hold Nate Parker responsible for his actions even while the criminal courts found him not guilty of the charge of rape. That's a curious attitude about accountability and the legal system. Conflating his actions with those of Jerry Sandusky is understandable, but not really logically tenable. Perhaps Penn State did create an environment where "rapists and sex abusers thrive." But where was the environment created: in the athletic department, or on the whole campus? We have evidence for the former, but not for the latter. And besides, Mr. Parker is not a rapist. A court of law said so.

Which gets us to the other interesting question: when is the judgment of a court of law final? Most of us are quite sure O.J. Simpson killed his wife, despite the jury verdict. Most of us are quite sure George Zimmerman is guilty of murdering Trayvon Martin, despite the jury verdict. Can we then say that Nate Parker is not a rapist, because of the jury verdict? Can we say that he is, despite the jury verdict?

Like the appellation of rape victims as "survivors," the question applies: cui bono? I heard a woman argue this idea on a radio interview recently, and all I could think was, it gave her power to label women as survivors. It gave her power in the world (she was being interviewed on the radio; I wasn't. I've had positions of responsibility, as a teacher, a pastor, a lawyer; nobody has ever interviewed me for any reason). It gave her power over the women she said were "survivors." Power to prolong their memories of their assaults ("rape" is a charged word in this context, I'm simply trying to be a bit more neutral), power to define them as she thinks they should be defined, power to tell them how to feel about themselves, now and until their dying day.

I've lived long enough to learn that nothing defines you unless you let it; that no event in your past is definitive unless you insist that it is. And when people want to tell you what you are, want to insist that you are this category now and forever, they do not have your best interests at heart. Cui bono? They do, because naming puts them in control of you.

So we will name Nate Parker a rapist, and control him to the end of his days. We will name O.J. Simpson and George Zimmerman murderers, and feel good about doing so. We will name rape victims "survivors." and make that terrible event the defining event of their lives. Oddly enough, today, even people who have been treated for cancer and lived don't like being called "survivors," because cancer wasn't the defining event of their lives. I know "victims" has become a problematic word in our modern vocabularies; but "survivor" is a term that brings many of it's own problems along with it.

And yes, having followed the trials of O.J. Simpson and George Zimmerman, I am convinced Simpson killed his wife and her lover (although I still can't figure out how he committed such a bloody crime and left only two drops of blood, his own, IIRC, in his Bronco), and I know Zimmerman was not convicted only because of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, which is an offense to civil order and the whole concept of criminal law. But still, they were acquitted by a court of law; and I should show more respect to that decision. If I hold them guilty in my mind, how can I say Nate Parker is innocent, or at least not guilty? We have a problem with reconciling what our legal system says, with what we want to believe. But just as being a rape "survivor" locks you into that event for the rest of your life (one more reason cancer "survivors" prefer not to be called "cancer survivors"), should we hold Nate Parker accountable for what he did, or didn't do, 17 years ago?

Is Snoopy right? Is there no balm in Gilead? And if there isn't: cui bono?

The Odor of Mendacity

Although the host acknowledges that most of the e-mails currently being discussed from Hillary Clinton's tenure as SOS were released by Judicial Watch, no one pointed out just how much the narrative of these e-mails is structured around what Judical Watch says the e-mails say.

Which is not what the e-mails say.

So where Drudge ruled our world when Bill was President, now Judicial Watch (who just took the baton from Drudge) rules our world now that Hillary would be President. Start there, and the rest of this nonsense makes sense.

It was pointed out to the panel of journalists, by both a guest and a listener, that the effort Clinton put into promoting Boeing and GE products overseas was an effort put forth by the Secretaries of Commerce and Transportation (IIRC on the latter), and was the kind of effort to promote American business since there was American business to promote. But this is different, the journalists insisted, because Boeing and GE gave money to the Clinton Foundation.

Which is a charity; and the only money the Clinton's can be shown to have taken from it is some travel expenses, presumably when they travel on Foundation business (but who knows?! Check the kerning on the itineraries!). Donating to charities is a think corporations do, for their public relations gain. Getting the SOS to promote your goods is a thing corporations do for American jobs (as well as profits). Actually even meeting with the SOS is a thing donors (like Melinda Gates! Check her kerning!) do, because a lot of what foundations do is coordinated through the State Department.

And did I mention it's a charity? And none of the money from the charity goes directly to the Clinton's, because that would involve violations of law that could be investigated?

No one is alleging that the Clinton Foundation didn’t (and doesn’t) do enormous amounts of good around the world…

To be clear: I have no evidence — none — that Clinton broke any law or did anything intentionally shady…

But the rest of Cilizza's column is about how BAD this looks! Because if you look at it just the right way, it really, REALLY looks bad. Besides, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence; or something.

Here, put these glasses on, and it will be clear to you that Hillary Clinton is GUILTY OF SOMETHING!

Conway replied that Trump “doesn’t do it without being attacked first,” a well-worn defense Trump himself has used since his campaign's infancy.

“But does that excuse it? Just today he called Mika Brzezinski neurotic, which is another term, basically, for mentally ill,” the Fox News host responded. “He’s called other female news personalities things like crazy. The man does hurl personal insults.”

“But not unprompted,” Conway said. “I don’t like personal insults, let me make very clear. I don’t like them only because I’m a mother of four young children, I’d be a hypocrite if I liked them. And I actually think he can win on the substance of the issues.”

“I watched a lot of his debates during the primaries,” Clinton said. “And he insulted all of his opponents, he insulted all of the moderators, he insulted, I guess, about 80 percent of the American people and the rest of the world.”

"That is a black community. He went to the heart of Chicago to go and give a speech to the University of Chicago in a campus, which is predominantly African-American, to make that argument," [Ex-Trump campaign manger Corey] Lewandowski said, mistaking the name of the university where the speech was supposed to take place. "And you know what happened? The campus was overrun and it was not a safe environment."

"No group in America has been more harmed by Hillary Clinton's policies than African Americans," he said, apparently pointing to individuals in the crowd. "No group. No group. If Hillary Clinton's goal was to inflict pain to the African American community, she could not have done a better job. It is a disgrace.""Detroit tops the list of most dangerous cities in terms of violent crime, number one," he said from a city 90 minutes away from Detroit with a population that is 93 percent white. "This is the legacy of the Democratic politicians who have run this city. This is the result of the policy agenda embraced by crooked Hillary Clinton."

He went on to claim "he should get votes from black voters because 'the inner cities are so bad.' "

[Trump] contemplated this for a second. ‘Brooklyn,’ he said, laughing. ‘No,’ he went on, “there are places in America that are among the most dangerous in the world. You go to places like Oakland. Or Ferguson. The crime numbers are worse. Seriously.’

The audience for Trump's tweets is not yours truly (who mines them for comedy and cognitive dissonance). The audience for Trump's tweets would never consider buying a book (probably) about their beloved icon that was written by two reporters for the Washington Post (certainly).

And the audience for that book will never read Trump's Twitter feed, and certainly wouldn't take advice from the man if they saw this tweet elsewhere (like, here, for instance).

So what is the point of this tweet, other than petulance and egomania? I mean, seriously: people are worried about donations to a charity run by the Clintons when this clown wants to be President and represents the other major political party in the country?

Why has Trump hit the mute button on the Olympics, while Clinton has pumped up the volume? There’s a good reason for that, and a surprising one. The spectacle of America vanquishing its global rivals is—ironically, amazingly—utterly terrible for the “America First” candidate.

A big part of his political message, the one you hear at his stump speeches, is that America has grown weak. America doesn’t win anymore, he says. “Crippled America” is the title of his most recent book. He alone can Make American Great Again. As someone who’s been around a few campaigns, believe me: The Olympics is about the worst thing that could have happened to the Trump train. Here’s a candidate whose message depends entirely on convincing Americans that they’re living in a failing nation overrun by criminal immigrants. And for the past two weeks, tens of millions of Americans have been glued to a multi-ethnic parade of athletes, winning easily. “Make America Great Again” has never felt more out-of-touch than it does against the backdrop of tenacious, over-achieving American athletes driven by their own journeys in pursuit of the American Dream.

Isn't it ironic? Don't you think? Could this be one more reason Trump is losing?

Thursday, August 18, 2016

"Every Sperm is Sacred"

The new rules, proposed by the Health and Human Services Commission, would no longer allow abortion providers to dispose of fetal remains in sanitary landfills, instead allowing only cremation or interment of all remains — regardless of the period of gestation. Abortion providers currently use third-party special waste disposal services.

The basic problem is, as Amanda Marcotte points out, the usual product of an abortion is not a dismembered fetal corpse (much as lurid anti-abortion descriptions would have you believe):

Funeral directors are in the business of burying actual bodies, not disposing of what looks, in most cases, like a really heavy period.

There is a simple public health reason, in other words, why this stuff is treated as medical waste.

This will, of course, affect spontaneous abortions, also known as miscarriages. Ectopic pregnancies as well. A miscarriage will require not only the pain and anguish of the loss, but a funeral director and a death certificate. What name will you put on the certificate for a child with no gender (unless they're going to require genetic testing of the fluid, and at whose expense?)? Do you name the product of a miscarriage? Doesn't that just make the experience infinitely worse? Aside from the added expense; and to whose advantage?

Is this going to happen?

With little notice and no announcement, the proposed rules were published in the Texas Register on July 1, triggering a 30-day public comment period. “Public comment will be taken and then the final rules are expected to take effect in September,” Black added.

I almost expect the funeral homes to join with the hospitals across the state to file a lawsuit against this one before October.

I wrote this last night, then this morning heard a discussion of the topic on a local radio news show (well, TeeVee couldn't discuss this; what kind of pictures would you use?). The argument from Paul Bettencourt (whom I have other reasons to despise as a politician) are, in his mind at least, essentially Roman Catholic (he says as much). That is, all human life deserve dignity, from "Natural birth to natural death" (Caesarians? Death by other than natural means? I dunno.), and fetal tissue=human remains, so we must treat it as such.

Except there's a reason the state is concerned with disposal of human remains, and that reason is public health. It isn't because we require people to treat human remains with respect and dignity. Indeed, I can abandon my dead father's corpse with the undertaker and tell him to bury the thing, and here's the money for the services. I can take the ashes of my deceased family member and flush them down the toilet, if I choose. The state can't require me to act in a dignified or respectful manner at all, and where, indeed, is the dignity and respect in pauper's graves?

We dispose of human remains carefully because of health issues, not because of issues of human dignity. Indeed, we don't treat people with dignity when they are alive; not as a matter of law, anyway. SuperMax prisons are a fine example. Why should we treat them with greater dignity when they are dead?

We should, of course, treat them with dignity while alive AND when dead; but we don't, and our entire penal system (to say the least) is predicated on removing as much dignity from prisoners as we can manage.

The "fetal tissue" of a spontaneous abortion, or an ectopic pregnancy, is, below 20 weeks and 350 grams, too small and too little to merit a death certificate under Texas law. How is it more deserving of burial than a diseased organ, or an amputated limb? There is as much potential human life in that clump of cells as there is in ejaculate, or menstrual flow. Spontaneous abortions occur because the fetus cannot develop; and ectopic pregnancies are an abortion (in the literal, not medical) sense ab initio. They are as much "human remains" as a lost limb or a removed organ. What this rule change is, as the ACLU attorney points out, is a response to Whole Women's Health v. Hellerstedt. They're just pushing the idea of how substantial an obstacle they can place "in the path of a woman's choice."

Bettencourt noted comments were still being taken on this rule (although he didn't allow for the rule change to be itself aborted, as it should be). Rather than just complain into the ether, I attach this comment from the Texas Tribune, and urge those affected who read this, to follow suit and comment:

All power matters?

As I was saying, if you're white and angry, it's just politics as usual; or maybe it's even a new wave in politics to which attention must be paid.

If you are black and angry, you're a danger to the status quo. A case in point.

John Carlos says what he did was not a "black power salute." But try to find a reference to it in Google without those words. He says that's a label applied by the "right wing media." It's certainly a label; and it certainly wasn't supplied by him.

And 48 years later, it's still controversial. George Wallace's claims about segregation are relegated to the dust bin of the nation's history. We are even surprised when anyone connects his racism to modern day racism, and no one wants to directly connect Wallace to Donald Trump; well, no one respectable, anyway.

But this simple gesture still shocks us; still stirs controversy; and is still connected to an assertion of "black power." Which is still what disturbs us most of all.

Wednesday, August 17, 2016

And now, on BBC1....

Honestly, can we just declare the GOP a rump and insane third party now?

CAMBRIDGE — An adviser to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump doubled down Tuesday on comments he made saying that Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton should be shot for treason.

But New Hampshire state Rep. Al Baldasaro, a Republican who co-chairs Trump's national veterans' coalition, stressed that he was not saying someone should assassinate Clinton.

"The liberal media took what I said and went against the law and the Constitution and ran with it, and they said that I wanted her assassinated, which I never did," [New Hampshire State Rep. and advisor to Donald Trump Al] Baldasaro told The Republican/MassLive.com. "I said I spoke as a veteran, and she should be shot in a firing squad for treason."
....
Baldasaro said his comments were in accordance with U.S. law establishing the death penalty for treason. He suggested that Clinton's use of a private email server could be considered treasonous.

"That's aiding and abetting the enemy by those emails on letting (out) names of Secret Service special agents, our veterans, on those emails," Baldasaro said.

Asked if he was concerned about the impact of his rhetoric on someone who might take it upon themselves to act violently, Baldasaro said, "No. ... Americans are better than that."

"What you in the liberal media consider rhetoric, I consider freedom of speech," Baldasaro said.

Baldasaro said if people are worried about the impact of him talking about the law on treason, "Maybe they need to take it off the books if they're that worried." He compared it to someone saying a person who killed a police officer should get the death penalty, which is the law in New Hampshire.

Asked whether he had spoken to Trump about his views, Baldasaro said he had. "Donald Trump, he might not agree on the way I said it, but I said it as a veteran," Baldasaro said.

Baldasaro said the law is "in black and white."

"If people are that stupid and don't understand, that's not my fault," he said.

The "law on treason" is based on Article III, sec. 3 of the Constitution, which cannot be altered save by amendment:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

The Court has held that the provision requires the nation to be at war for there to be an enemy to which aid and comfort is given. That is the law "in black and white." If Rep. Baldoraso doesn't understand that, it's not my fault.

“We’ve got an un-indicted felon as his opponent and you’re talking about Khan, about him making a remark about this man,” he said. [Un-indicted felon? Wouldn't that be all of us? I mean, if you have a particularly authoritarian view of government, at least.]

“All right, I don’t care if he’s a Gold Star parent," he continued. "He certainly doesn’t deserve that title, OK, if he’s as anti-American as he’s illustrated in his speeches and in his discussion. I mean, if he’s a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or supporting, you know, the ISIS-type of attitude against America, there’s no reason for Donald Trump to have to honor this man.”

Paladino, who made a failed bid for governor of New York in 2010, went on to say that he does not feel that Trump should change his rhetoric in any way and that no one can be sure that President Obama is not a Muslim.

'Wait, wait wait," he said. 'How do you know that's not true?! That's not fair, Connell! You've formed a conclusion about a man because he's told you that."

Every knee shall bend, and every head shall bow

Apparently this election is one of Biblical importance; or a sign of the Apocalypse, I'm not sure which:

“Donald Trump is running for president because he really, truly believes he can turn the country around," [Omarosa Manigault] said. "More importantly, every critic, every detractor will have to bow down to President Trump.”

Will he enter the White House trailing clouds of glory, or will he just walk like a mortal? And I guess this will be his first executive order?

Tuesday, August 16, 2016

"She Turned Me Into a Newt!"

“The voters want someone that’s gonna fight back because they are tired of seeing left-wing reporters literally beat Trump supporters into submission into supporting policies they don’t agree with,” [Trump spokeswoman Katrina] Pierson told Fox Business Network. “It just shuts them down and that’s not what they’re seeing in this campaign.”

“That is the kind of coverage that CNN offers in this presidential race as they literally kiss Hillary Clinton’s ass and Obama’s ass every day,” [Sean Hannity] said.

As they say on the intertoobs: "Pics or it didn't happen!"

The funny thing is, what's literally going on is that voters are being treated as sheeple. Voters are routinely portrayed, not as citizens with a responsibility, but as sheeple pushed to and fro by the winds of vagary.

Both sides do it, but it's really kind of insulting. Of course, everybody's a mindless drone except me and thee; although there are times I'm not so sure about thee.

(And yes, "literally" now means the exact opposite of what we all grew up thinking it means. There is precedent for this. "Awful" used to mean "filled with awe." Now it means anything but that. Although the better example is the rising use of intensifiers, of which this is another example. "Really" used to mean "truly,"; something real was something true. Now it is an intensifier, so something is really true, not just true. Because apparently there are levels of truth, with some truth more true than other truth. So it goes.)

Vote early and often!

Voting actually starts in less than six weeks, on Sept. 23 in Minnesota and South Dakota, the first of some 35 states and the District of Columbia that allow people to cast ballots at polling sites or by email before Nov. 8. Iowa is expected to have ballots ready by the end of September, as are Illinois and two other states.

The electoral battlegrounds of Arizona and Ohio are to begin voting on Oct. 12, nearly four weeks before Election Day. And North Carolina and Florida will be underway before Halloween.

Early voting has become a critical, even decisive factor in presidential elections: President Obama was sufficiently ahead in the early vote in Iowa and Nevada in 2012 that his campaign shifted resources from those states to others, according to former advisers, who also credited enthusiastic early voting in 2008 for his victory in North Carolina and elsewhere.

Nearly 32 percent of voters cast their ballots before Election Day in 2012, according to census data, compared with 29.7 percent in 2008 and 20 percent in 2004.

Yeah, almost purely coincidental; but still....

I didn't realize voting started as early as September 23; that resets the calendar considerably. Besides, Trump has no ground game (the candidate himself said he doesn't need a GOTV effort), and they are banking on his performance in the debates. Which is downright funny, because Clinton is going to clean his clock by just letting Donald be Donald.

I can't think of anything more motivating to keep that clown away from the Oval Office.

Besides, even if Trump does have a "win" in a debate:

“I don’t know if Trump has a great debate or gets a spike in support after it,” said Mr. Murphy, the Republican strategist, “but he certainly doesn’t have the machinery to take advantage of it by getting those people to the polls.”

I pastored two churches before deciding the pastorate wasn't for me (I didn't reach that decision alone, I was aided by the church hierarchy, which tends to work on the level of personalities, not on the level of generalities and high ideals). In that time I experienced two congregations profoundly convinced that they were entitled to their own facts. Let me give you two examples, which I've probably shared before.

In my first congregations, several months in (I was there less than a year; I left just before they left me unemployed), a the took me aside and discussed my reliance on the Bible (I used three readings in worship. The Protestant norm is two, at best: one from the "Old Testament," one from the New. This member's wife would later aver that my use of "Prayer of our Savior," which is in the UCC Book of Worship, was a Roman Catholic title, which proved I was a Protestant heretic.). He told me he had read the Bible as a young man, and he really didn't need to hear from it anymore.

Later, in my second church, where I lasted about three years (I don't brag on my pastoral abilities), in a congregational meeting I presented some carefully prepared charts regarding membership decline and worship attendance. My purpose was to comfort the people, to show them that while we were few in number, we were deep in faithfulness, and our "decline" was a result of changes in the neighborhood around us, and we could draw strength from who we were, rather than despair about who we weren't anymore (the area around the church had gone from rural/agricultural mostly-German, to urban and very ethnically diverse. But many of the church members had grown up on the farms, or expecting the neighborhood of their childhood to remain forever.). My purpose was to say there is nothing wrong with where we were, but after I finished a member stood up and immediately pointed to the last 3 years on the chart, and said the decline had continued under my tenure, and therefore I was responsible for the failure of the church.

As I type this I listen to Brueggemann enunciate a familiar theme, the role of the Psalms in challenging the "dominant world" as the only real world.

Those church members had heard it on Allen West and read it on Facebook, and I was simply presenting the lies of the New York Times. Not literally, of course, but the distinction is without a difference. As Paul Simon said, "A man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest." As Breuggemann says, we can take our "dark proclivities" and hand them to God, deny them, or act them out.

I never served a church that wanted to hand their "dark proclivities" to God. To hand them over to God is first, to deny the power of your own agency; and second, to admit you have "dark proclivities" in the first place. Either is an act of humility too great for the people who "ran" the churches I pastored.

It's really not that much of a stretch, then, to imagine a group of people committed to a set of facts and ideas for which they will brook no challenge. Will there be a day of reckoning? Sort of. Churches like the ones I served will decline, and eventually come to an end. They are too set in their ways to allow new life into their congregation, to allow God to act in their congregation. It could happen; the Holy Spirit blows where it wills, and is always surprising in where it arises and is felt. But it can't happen without change, and reckoning is not change; it is simply judgment. We all like to sit in judgment, and assume the reckoning won't include us.

Will there be a day of reckoning in the nation? Nope; not in a cataclysmic way, anyway. Unlike small churches nobody notices anymore (I literally had people tell me they drove down the busy street my last church was on and didn't even notice the huge sanctuary, built to hold 300+, on the grounds. The roof alone reached a peak about least 4 stories above the ground. I think the trees hid it.), nations don't quietly go away, and major political parties don't just fade into insignificance the way denominations can. There will be some dramatic changes, perhaps, in the GOP; then again, perhaps not. The true believers of Trump will go back to being a minority position, and perhaps grumble about being left out of their party or any party; but minority positions are always locked out, ultimately, from the exercise of power.

Just ask the Democrats in the House of Representatives right now.

(I do like the way, in the quoted passage, the attack on the "liberal media" is justified; it's just that the attack went too far. We always justify our actions; we always blame others for going "too far." (As I say, the "reckoning" never includes us.) It's easier to justify our actions than to think we were wrong from the start. That would be the real corrective, the real reckoning, truly handing our dark proclivities to God. I suppose the answer is, as Brueggmann points out, we can only do that in a liturgical setting. It can't really be done in the world.)